Interact with agents
When you visit a SharePoint site, page, or document library, or when you use Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, you can interact with agents to quickly get information about the site, page, documents, or tasks that you have permissions for. The ready-made agent that comes with the SharePoint site or document library is already set up to assist with general tasks and questions across your SharePoint site. Similarly, Copilot Chat agents are configured to help with various tasks and workflows within the chat interface.
However, depending on how your site administrator configured your site or how your Copilot Chat is set up, you might be able to interact with agents that are tailored to specific projects and teams. These types of agents provide more focused assistance based on a defined set of sites, pages, files, or chat contexts that are relevant to your work. This design allows for a more personalized and efficient user experience.
Interacting with agents in SharePoint and Copilot Chat streamlines intuitive interaction with your site, pages, files, and chat tasks. It can also enhance collaboration with your teammates. Here are a few examples of prompts that users might enter in a SharePoint or Copilot Chat agent for various scenarios:
- A recruitment specialist in Contoso's HR department wants to quickly screen candidates for a warehouse manager position in their plastics division. They can ask the agent to create a table based on the resumes they have in the document library. This table can list each candidate's information, such as names, experiences, education, skills, and contact information. They can also ask the agent specific questions about these documents, such as: Which of these candidates worked in warehouse management and in the plastics industry?
- A new sales rep at Adatum Corporation wants to use product proposals and performance overviews to better understand the company's product lines. Doing so enables the rep to communicate the benefits of Adatum's products with potential customers: Please create a 5-minute elevator pitch about product X that I can present to a client next week.
- An instructional designer for Fabrikam's professional learning and development division must create an outline for a new training course based on the files about a new product: Please create a course outline for a one-hour training course designed to teach internal sales professionals about product Y and how to communicate its benefit with potential customers.
When you interact with agents in SharePoint and Copilot Chat, you should keep in mind the following considerations:
- Agents only respond to your questions using information from sites, pages, files, or chat contexts that you already have access to and are included as the agent's knowledge sources. As such, your answer from an agent might sometimes be limited. If necessary, you should contact the site administrator if you need more access.
- When a SharePoint hub site is included as the knowledge source for an agent, the hub's associated sites are automatically included as part of the agent's knowledge sources. In turn, the agent uses information from both the hub site and its associated sites to respond.
- Agents currently don't use data from SharePoint Lists.
Use an agent in SharePoint
Let's take a look at the steps involved in using an agent in SharePoint:
Sign in to your SharePoint site with your work or school account.
On any SharePoint site, page or document library, select the Copilot icon that appears in the upper-right corner of the screen. The agent chat pane opens on the right side of the screen.
Select the dropdown arrow next to the current agent to see the agents that are approved for the site, along with a personalized list of agents based on your recent activity. You can select the agent you want to use from the dropdown list. Select Show more to expand and see more agents if any are available.
Use the prompt to ask questions. Start asking questions about the site or documents by selecting from the suggested prompts or writing your own. You can ask the agent to summarize the documents, give you the point of contact for a project, and tell you the latest updates. Ask follow-up questions if needed.
Use an agent in Copilot Chat
Let's take a look at the steps involved in using an agent in Copilot Chat:
Sign into Microsoft 365 Copilot with your work or school account. The Microsoft Copilot Chat page appears by default.
The navigation pane that appears on the side of the page displays the agents under the Chat > Agents section. The list of agents is broken down into pinned and unpinned agents. The pinned agents appear first followed by the most recently used agents. Pinned agents are typically your most highly used agents. As such, you can “pin” them to the navigation pane so they always appear. Due to space considerations, only five pinned and unpinned agents are displayed. If you have five or more pinned agents, then no unpinned, recently used agents are displayed. Assuming you have unpinned agents that appear in the list, once the number of pinned and unpinned agents exceeds five, the next most recently used agent falls off the list. As such, the list dynamically changes based on usage.
You can select the agent you want to use from any of the agents that appear in your agent pane, whether it be any of the pinned or unpinned agents. If the agent that you want to use doesn't appear in the list of pinned and unpinned agents, then select All agents in the navigation pane. This option opens the Agent Store, which displays your agents and the prebuilt agents that you used, along with the prebuilt agents that were created by Microsoft.
When you select an agent, the agent's name appears in the middle of the page, along with any starter prompts that were defined for the agent. All the prebuilt agents (such as Copilot, Visual Creator, Prompt Coach, and Writing Coach) come with starter prompts. For each custom agent that you create in Copilot Chat, you can optionally configure starter prompts for the agent. You can now begin your chat experience by selecting one of the starter prompts, or you can write your own prompt. As with any chat experience, you can respond to Copilot answers by asking follow-up questions as needed.
Let's examine how you can pin an agent in the navigation pane on the Microsoft 365 home page. There are two ways in which you can pin an agent. If the agent that you want to pin appears in the navigation pane as an unpinned agent, then select the Pin icon that appears next to the agent.
However, if the unpinned agent that you want to pin doesn't appear in the navigation pane, then select All agents in the navigation pane. This option opens the Agent Store, which displays your agents and the prebuilt agents that you used, along with the prebuilt agents that were created by Microsoft. In the list of Your Agents, select the ellipsis icon that appears for that agent, and in the drop-down menu that appears, select Pin.
Once an agent is pinned on the navigation pane, you can unpin it by selecting the Unpin icon next to the agent.
Refer to specific files in your chat
When you chat with agents, you can refer to specific files in two ways:
Select specific files in a document library and ask questions about them in the agent.
Select a file using the ‘/' selector in the chat.
Manage your chat history
Only you can see your chats with agents in SharePoint and Copilot Chat. When you choose a chat history, the current agent switches to the agent used in the chat history. You can manage your chat history through the following tasks:
- Rename a chat history item.
- Delete your chat history from the chat pane.
- Delete chat history for a specific conversation or for all chats.
Supported file types
When you chat with an agent in SharePoint or Copilot Chat, you can currently reference the following types of files:
- Office documents: DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLSX
- New Microsoft 365 formats: FLUID, LOOP
- Universal formats: PDF, TXT, RTF
- Web files: ASPX, HTM, HTML
- OpenDocument formats: ODT, ODP